Update: Georg Baselitz Still Thinks Women Can’t Paint

If you’ll recall, all the way back in 2013, in an interview with Der Spiegel, the artist Georg Baselitz told a reporter, “Women don’t paint very well.” In an interview in The Guardian this week, Baselitz was slightly less blunt in making this argument:

“The market doesn’t lie,” he says. “Even though the painting classes in art academies are more than 90% made up by women, it’s a fact that very few of them succeed. It’s nothing to do with education, or chances, or male gallery owners. It’s to do with something else and it’s not my job to answer why it’s so. It doesn’t just apply to painting, either, but also music.”

…

“What does it matter so much? If women are ambitious enough to succeed, they can do so, thank you very much. But up until now, they have failed to prove that they want to. Normally, women sell themselves well, but not as painters.”

This guy.

Why don’t we make a tradition of this, Georg? Every two years, you’ll say dubious things in an interview, I’ll write a pithy blog post about it, and then we’ll just sort of go on like that until one of us, mercifully, dies or retires. Let’s call it the Georg Baselitz Biennial. No girls allowed, am I right?